All right, so, some constructive criticism.
Dreadnoughts. Just like in EVE itself, they can be quickly and easily whittled away by a determined squadron of smaller ships. No problem, it's just like blobbing in EVE Online, and I've been in so many blobs, I can't count high enough to figure out how much ISK I've lost by being one of the frigates or cruisers being picked off (I'm not a BS kind of guy). That said, as a test, I took the Naglfar (Min Dread) into a sim battle, left it at stock settings, then brought in a Typhoon. Leaving control entirely to the AI, I watched as my dread promisingly took the Typhoon to max flux in the initial "charge at each other" stage, without it getting off a shot. Well and good. But then as soon as Siege Mode dissipated, the Typhoon vented, and moved in to attack. Now, it took about ten minutes, but the vanilla AI still strafed my massive artillery perfectly, and ducked out when Siege Mode went active... until, between shooting and their own potshots, managed to take me to full flux, and then slowly whittle me away.
Now, on one hand, you can argue that this isn't meant to be JUST like EVE; I understand that. On the other hand, you can argue that this fairly easily replicates EVE, as Dreads' weapons aren't really meant to fight anything smaller than other capitals or stations. Both of those said, I think that there's a bit of a middle ground to be found here, as while it's true that the battleship would be receiving glancing blows, its tank would probably be good enough to stay alive if the only thing fighting it were my Dread, one-on-one. But it would not be able to singlehandedly kill me (in EVE), because it would lack either the sustained DPS or the alpha to really deal damage that could break my tank.
What's the solution here? Well, couple things I've thought of.
1.) Give all capitals (Dreads, Carriers, and Moms) a hardwired System that simulates tanking, which is to say, an armor-repairing (does that exist in the code?) one for the armor tanks (Amarr and, if I remember my fits right, Minmatar) and one that increases shield protection value for the shield tanks. The idea here is that it would mean that, just like in EVE, the only way you can actually kill capitals is by either the sustained fire of a large fleet, or the alpha strike of an even larger fleet.
2.) Hand-in-hand with this, increase the raw damage of each Dreadnought's built-in weapons. Yes, I said increase. Because see, the trick then is to counter it with making them track very slowly (about as slowly as they do during their firing/reload phases as in the mod right now). But then these weapons become useless, yes? NOT if you're using them against other Dreadnoughts and capitals! In this way, you would be able to simulate the Dreadnoughts having the raw offensive value to punch through the tanks (as simulated in point 1), but also the fact that unless they happen to be right on the money or incredibly lucky, they can't kill anything smaller than a battleship or so, simply because those things move too fast.
I'm not sure you mean to make the game JUST like EVE, maybe some of this stuff you already knew about/considered and discarded. I'm just throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks, ya know?
One other thing that might completely throw a wrench in the works is Dreadnoughts against each other. You don't yet have Dreads available in the simulation battles, and as tempted as I am to go into the campaign and grind my way to buying a Dread and then tracking down an enemy fleet with one, I can't really see what it's like right now. Sure, there's the missions with Dreads vs. Dreads, but it's more like fleets vs. fleets, and it would be way too tricky to get the enemy to have nothing left but their Dread, without allowing my own Dread come to harm and keeping my AI fleetmates from doing too much damage to theirs to present a truly accurate one-on-one.
That said, I can anticipate the Dreadnoughts' turning radii playing hell with the weapon changes I propose, as they ARE able to quickly turn and bring their guns to bear -- and since the AI thinks in the sense of "hey, I want THIS weapon to attack THIS target, what's the quickest way to get the enemy in my firing arc?", they'll waste no time twisting around WAY faster than a Dread should. But how do you fix this -- make Dreads turn slowly? Now they can't bring their primary weapons to bear even against other Dreads, because they enter the battle facing perpendicular to their weapon arcs. Not to mention that even I can see where an issue might arise with mobility -- they're already horribly slow, why make it even worse and thus ruin the player's experience?
Ah well, if you want to discuss some points, or even just shoot me down entirely (no worries if that's the case, it's your show and I can't mod for *** myself, so who am I to judge?), you can post here, or PM me if you REALLY hate my feedback and don't want things public.
EDIT: and to clarify, I am well aware that the player can offset these issues and singlehanded lay demolish a fleet by taking manual control, and/or by installing hull mods and having skills. Well, the way I figure, hullmods simulate ultra rare Faction gear, and skills representing having Level 5 across-the-board skills, and thus vanilla-fit ships are all using T1 gear and have no SP -- so no deviation from EVE there!
